Melancholia
by Ancalime8301
Summary: Sometimes life doesn't seem worth living. Warnings: depression, suicide attempt.


Warnings: depression, suicide attempt  
Disclaimer: the paragraph at the end is straight from ACD, the rest is my warped imagination (and drawn from my previous experiences with suicidal thoughts)  
Wordcount: 1,820 (not including the quote at the end)

Written for a shkinkmeme (on LiveJournal) prompt: I want Suicidal!Holmes. But NOT because Watson has married Mary.  
A/N: You can read this as Holmes/Watson, but it wasn't explicitly written to be slash.  
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* * *

To think he had been doing so well. But then, he had learned long ago that the depths follow the heights, and this had been an unusually long and high height. He should've known it couldn't last, wouldn't last, and he would be tossed headlong into the abyss, like so many times before.

Continuing to solve cases was the only way of redeeming himself; fortunately a steady stream of clients crossed the threshold that fall and winter. He took on three, four, five cases at a time, desperately trying to keep his mind afloat. If he never slowed down, never stopped, maybe, just maybe, he would never have to face the fact that his life wasn't worth living, that he didn't deserve the space his body occupied.

But it wasn't enough. There were still idle hours in the day, which his mind perversely used to circle 'round the sinkhole of his worthlessness. Cocaine allowed his thoughts to swirl a little further away from the void, in happier places of music and successful conclusions and quiet evenings at home, but even they were stained with the taint of his failings, the piece he couldn't execute properly, his obtuse mistakes, his faked death.

Once in a while he wondered if it would have been better if he had truly died at Reichenbach. Sometimes that thought even progressed to wondering if he ought to simply cease existing. But he wasn't that desperate.

Yet.

He struggled to make it through the day, his mental fortitude exhausted by the mere requirements of existence. Still he muddled through, somehow managing to brilliantly solve case after case, expertly revealing the conclusion to his awestruck audience in a desperate bid for someone to tell him he wasn't worthless. Watson may write of his dramatics and his tendency for the theatric, but the good Doctor could not even begin to comprehend that the Holmes he thought he knew so well was also merely an act.

Just when he thought he must have discovered the bottom of the chasm in his mind, everything got worse.

First was the case he didn't solve in time, and the criminal escaped abroad. Even Mycroft's intervention and the involvement of numerous foreign agents failed to result in a successful arrest. Watson tried to assure him it was through no fault of his own, the case had simply not been brought to his attention quickly enough. He knew the truth: he had not thought quickly enough. He had failed to see the connecting strands, he had failed to notice something soon enough to provide the vital clue, he had failed.

He had failed.

He spent three days in his room with only his cocaine, and still the bitter recriminations haunted his every thought.

A chance for redemption. A kidnapping -of a dog, which he ordinarily would turn away with a contemptuous sniff, but the reward was substantial and if he could only prove to himself that he was as talented as everyone thought he was . . ! The ransom was arranged, the location staked out, and everything lined up neatly in his mind. When they burst into the stable, the dog was already dead. The kidnappers evidently had hoped to dispense with the prized racer and get away with the ransom money.

Again Watson tried to convince him there was nothing he could have done differently, but again he knew the truth.

He simply wasn't good enough, even for a dog.

He snuck out after Watson went to bed that night and drank himself into euphoria, then went a few rounds in the boxing ring and let himself be thoroughly beaten, dragging himself home before dawn and never breathing a word to Watson of his injuries. He deserved the punishment, after all.

He solved a few minor cases along the way, wondering why it was these desperate people invariably came to him when there were others -the official force, for example- who could resolve their problems with much more finesse.

His final chance came in the form of a frightened young woman, who feared her husband was going to kill her for an infidelity she didn't commit. Watson seemed to think his counsel was sound, but there must have been some flaw in it: she was dead two days later, strangled in the hotel room where she hid from her husband. He had found her. The authorities in turn found him and he found his way to the rope, but it was thanks to Lestrade and his men.

The dead woman weighed constantly on his mind and spirit, until he couldn't stand the added strain. He had no cases currently, so no one was depending on him, and he had enough money in his accounts to cover his half of the rent for a long time to come.

He shot himself so full of cocaine that the blood sang in his veins, and he went out looking for a fight, hoping a convenient knife or a well-aimed blow would end his miserable existence.

All he succeeded in doing was making his existence more miserable, with Watson hovering anxiously and minding his every need, for he was too bandaged to mind himself for nearly a week.

More cases came along, ones that, by some miracle, he didn't bungle, but nothing could erase the guilt and shame of his failures. It was only a matter of time until he failed again, and he could only hope the sole one to suffer -and perhaps even die- as a result would be him. He rather longed for such a result, though he knew that to admit such aloud was unwise.

And fate had determined not to be so kind. There were several dangerous and otherwise harrowing situations that arose in the course of his next cases, but through them all, no matter how reckless his behavior, his only wound was a long scratch on his shin.

Finally he decided a more direct approach was needed. Several days were spent pondering the most effective method of removing himself from the farce called life. Relying upon others to mortally wound him was too unpredictable. Throwing himself under the wheels of a cab or off a bridge was not a guarantee of success, and he was not willing to fail at this, his most vital task.

Cocaine appeared to be the ideal solution. Injecting a sufficient amount would cause death within minutes, and there were many occasions when he was alone for hours. He hesitated on only one point: Watson. Watson would be the one to find his body if he did the deed at Baker Street, and he knew that would cause him distress. But Watson would be free without him, free to return to active medical practice, to go to the country on holiday, to do what he pleased without being forced to mind the useless being he called a friend. Watson would recover from the shock and live a much happier life afterward, he was sure of it.

Thus it was settled. He concluded his cases and only reluctantly accepted new ones, always waiting for a moment when there were no obligations and he could remove himself without disappointing any clients.

There were days here and there that would have suited his purposes admirably, except that Watson was spending an unusual amount of time at home, sitting with him, conversing pleasantly with him even when he didn't actually say anything in return, and otherwise making a nuisance of himself.

Nighttime would have been ideal, since daytime posed so many barriers and Watson was exacting about getting sufficient rest, but he found himself so exhausted so early in the evening that he did not always manage to rise from the settee before he was unconscious for the night; waiting until Watson had retired to stumble to his bedroom, fill the syringe, and give himself release was a nigh on impossible task.

Finally, a day arrived in which he had no cases and Watson had a lunch engagement at his club. Watson seemed hesitant to leave, but he was lying motionless on the settee like so many times before. There was no visible indication that anything was amiss, so Watson had no reason not to leave.

The distance from the settee to his bedroom and the store of cocaine seemed interminable, and his heart pounded with anxiety that he wouldn't manage to cross it and inject himself before Watson returned. But the watch on his bedside table said only a quarter of an hour had passed since Watson left, so he had time.

His hands shook as he grasped his salvation and sank to the floor in front of the grate. Carefully, oh so carefully, he filled the syringe and slid it home, closing his eyes as the drug mixed with his blood and raced through his body. To be absolutely certain, he filled the syringe again and let a second dose stream in to join the first.

He curled up on the floor, feeling his heart race, and waited for the darkness.

The darkness, at least, was swift and merciful.

.

Light.

There shouldn't be light . . . should there? He had never paid much attention to near-death stories, scoffing at the romanticism, and so had no idea what to expect.

Pain. He was fairly certain that there shouldn't be pain. Tears sprang to his eyes, both of pain and of bitter disappointment.

He couldn't even kill himself properly.

What a miserable failure.

What a useless wretch.

As awareness crept back slowly, he realized he was being cradled against a chest that vibrated with speech. The words were yet beyond him, but the smell was of Watson, and that was a comfort.

When Watson realized he was awake, he was shaken and scolded and tightly embraced. Watson admitted to diluting his cocaine solution, out of fear and worry -worry that he was taking too much too often, and fear that he would misjudge and bring himself to this very point.

How to tell him this was not a misjudgement?

But Watson was a doctor, he could see how much was absent and recognize it would take more than one large dose to empty it to such a point.

When he finally met Watson's gaze, he saw the knowing there, and the pain.

Pain? Why would there be pain?

He must have vocalized this question, for Watson gently cupped his face and said, "Losing you like this would be the death of me."

He didn't understand how that could be true, but the tears on Watson's cheeks proclaimed it so. And Watson never lied. He could be foolish, but never deceitful.

So he agreed to whatever Watson said about going to see a doctor and helping him get better and hoped that somewhere, somehow, he would come to understand. Perhaps it would help him resist future falls into the abyss.

.

.

_It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes's iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes I may some day recount, gave positive injunctions that the famous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown. The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest interest, for his mental detachment was absolute, but he was induced at last, on the threat of being permanently disqualified from work, to give himself a complete change of scene and air._

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Devil's Foot


End file.
